13 Lich King

Cody felt as normal as could be expected, considering the circumstances. He had no sensation of being upside down, he felt like the whole world had shifted, not just himself, and as he took a tentative step forward, it seemed completely natural, just like walking on the ground usually did. {So I'm not walking on walls like a spider. If I jump again will I land back on the floor?} He braced himself for a moment, gripped his sword tightly in his fist and gave a small hop, both feet left the ceiling for a moment, but then touched back down as if by normal gravity.

{Gravity…}

His mind flipped through all the things he had done the last few days. He lifted things that he shouldn't have been able to, he caused everything in a room to be tossed against a wall, he was able to swing the heavy sword faster than it should be possible. Cody thought back to the feelings that accompanied each of these actions, it didn't feel like he was tapping into some magical pool of resource points, it didn't feel like a video game, with stat points or an easy-to-read character sheet of skills… It felt like intent. He had wanted to jump up high and then found himself pulled towards the ceiling, when he wanted to hit harder with his sword it became heavier as it swung, when he needed to swing faster it became lighter.

Powers. Like super powers. Cody had no idea why the concept felt so weird now; he had seen that government agent, Mark, turn invisible before, but being stronger had seemed and felt comprehensible, linear... this was something else entirely, something Cody didn't quite understand.

{Mark. Breaches. The dungeon. The Lich.} Cody took a deep breath and recentered himself, forcefully pulling himself back from an existential crisis. {I need to get this done and get out of here.}

Cody focused his strength into jumping off the ceiling, crouching before launching himself as hard as he could, and formed the thought of landing on the floor. {SOFTLY.} He felt the sudden weightlessness and then a lurch as up became down once more. He was still falling head first onto his outstretched hand, but in the moment just before he made contact he felt suddenly lighter. He quickly rolled to his feet, narrowly missing a bony, clawed hand scraping the stone where he had made contact a moment before. Cody launched himself at the construct, intending to tackle it with his shoulder. {HARD!} Cody shouted the word inside his head, and as he made contact he felt himself become heavier. A crunching, snapping, twisting sound accompanied the hit, and the skeletal form was rag-dolled into the opposite wall. The bony scaffolding collapsed at the base of the wall, as Cody quickly turned his attention to the second construct.

A white-hot pain traveling from his shoulder to the top of his stomach, told him that he had not moved quick enough. Cody was driven to his knee, and he could feel wetness spreading on his shirt as a series of long slashes began bubbling blood. The second construct stood poised to rake him with another bony claw. Cody flung his left hand out towards the skeletal figure. {Heavy, too heavy to move.}

As he finished the thought in his mind, the lumbering figure staggered, with a shuddering, clattering noise it seemed to cave in slightly, lose a few inches in height. It was slowed significantly, but it didn't stop. Cody scrambled, trying to get up off his knee, but he felt tired, almost drunk. His movements didn't feel sharp anymore. {If I can chop out its leg, maybe it'll be enough to crush it completely.}

As Cody took a determined step forward, his sword suddenly dropped, too heavy for him to lift and jerked him down along with it. A fraction of a second later, a bolt of purple glowing energy shot past the space Cody had been occupying, slamming into the stone wall behind him. The beam shattered when it struck like purple shards of glass exploding on impact. When the moment passed there was a perfectly round hole in the stone, as big as a basketball, as if the stone had always had a round hole bored right through it.

Cody spun, the Lich wasn't content to just manipulate skeletons in the background anymore, it was facing Cody directly. Small red fires blazed brightly in its eye sockets, and he could hear a rasping voice, like drawing a steel knife against leather, as the Lich chanted, and its bony fingers drew a series of complex motions in the air.

Cody focused on the sword, willing it to be lighter as he hefted it up with both hands. The last construct was still struggling to move, thankfully, and Cody hoped that was enough as he left it behind to attack the Lich directly.

The Lich didn't move as he approached, but followed Cody with his burning stare, keeping up its eerie, otherworldly chant. Cody felt as if the room hummed along with the Lich's words. With all the adrenaline he had left, Cody swung his sword, but it touched only air.

Right before the sword would have made contact, the Lich disappeared with a blue flash and reappeared a dozen yards away. Its hand motions became frenzied, then began to glow red as a flaming mass of fire shot in Cody's direction.

Cody flung himself to the floor, the heat sizzling in the air above him. The dungeon seemed more dark and dim after the rush of light, and as Cody pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, he could smell burnt hair and see that all of his exposed skin looked shiny and red. The Lich's chanting never ceased, its hands moving like it was working invisible clay. The now familiar twisting, cracking noise could be heard as the previously downed construct remade itself. Cody reached for his sword, but could barely lift it, not able to raise the tip of the sword off the floor. He felt a weird tightening in his chest, and could almost feel the second construct pushing away the extra force he had been holding it down with, like his will was a tangible force, and it was being pushed back.

Cody could sense now that there was a limit to how much he could do, and he might have just found it.

Another red glow snapped Cody back to reality, and he quickly released the too-heavy sword, flinging himself to the side to avoid another fiery blast. Before he could get his hands under him and push himself up, a huge skeletal foot smashed him to the floor and started to increase the weight, trying to squish him like a bug. "LIGHT!" He shouted and tried to buck the construct, his mind imagining a feather or a balloon. The weight on his back vanished, and the construct almost seemed to float above Cody's body.

Cody seized its foot and swung the enormous creature like a hammer toss, flinging it at the Lich. With both of his outstretched hands still aimed at the construct, he yelled after it, "HEAVY!", just before impact. Another flash of blue, and then the construct slammed against the far wall, collapsing, bones snapping and shattering, splinters and fragments flying everywhere. The Lich had teleported back to its dais, unharmed.

Before Cody could react, an impact sent him rag-dolling along the stone floor, stopping when his body thumped against the edge of the dais. His vision wavered, blurred and dim, and he blinked furiously trying to bring the room back into focus. The second construct had struck him while he was dealing with the first, he was too sluggish to track them all.

He looked up, into the eyes of the Lich standing only a few feet away. Faint purple light was starting to coalesce around the bleached-white bone of its fingers, and its rasping voice began to pick up in pace. {That purple beam… fucker's going to delete me!}

Cody struggled to one knee, his sword halfway across the room, he tried to pull it towards him like some kind of Jedi, but it didn't budge. He could feel rumbling steps get close as the last construct lumbered towards him. {If I try to hit it, it will just teleport away again.}

Cody looked at the ceiling and made a decision. He reached out with both arms towards the ceiling and roared, "DOWN!" He felt pain across his entire body, like he was being forced to carry the entire weight of the ancient room, and it was crushing him. He gritted his teeth, tasting iron. Dark lines formed on the ceiling, the fissures growing like spiderwebs, even as the weight bore down on him more he thought he could feel his bones begin to fracture, he screamed again, "DOWN! HEAVY!"

Sharp, cracking filled the room, and the ceiling rushed down in an avalanche of stone, a purple light flashed, then everything plunged into darkness.